Conventional vehicle safety systems regulate vehicle speed according to a speed setting that a vehicle operator may set and adjust while driving. Adaptive cruise control systems detect moving objects in the vehicle path, such as preceding vehicles, and provide throttle and brake control, as necessary, to maintain a trailing distance from the preceding vehicle.
However, these systems do not take into account acceleration or deceleration of the host vehicle or the detected object. Due to the variety of situations which arise when accounting for changes in acceleration, prior vehicle safety systems cannot perform the calculations for all situations without null values occurring. Accordingly, these safety systems are programmed to maintain a trailing distance utilizing current vehicle velocity. These safety systems utilize velocity of the vehicle and performs the calculations frequently to take into account any changes in the velocity.